He avoided meeting Mickey’s eyes. He knew Mickey would take it for cowardice, but he was afraid that if he looked at the vicious little bastard, he’d kill him. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the look on Mickey’s face as he’d thrown the bottle at the man in Westbourne Park Road.
Sheila gave him a big smile and tottered over with an open bottle of wine. “Long time, no see, big fella.” She kissed his cheek and the smell of the wine on her breath made his stomach turn over. “Come on, join the party,” she urged, grabbing a dirty china cup off a nearby table. He knew she’d been drinking more and more over the summer, but tonight she was downright blotto.
“I’ll pass,” he said, as easily as he could, giving her arm a squeeze.
It was Mickey who started the jeering. “What’s the matter, big fella, can’t handle the booze? Pansy,” he added, as if that were the height of insults. “Or are you just missing your girlfriend?” Watching Denis’s face, he laughed. “Oh, I know all about the girlfriend. No secrets here, brother.” He emphasized the last word, his little private joke.
“Well, you can’t have it both ways, can you?” Denis replied, trying to make a joke of the childish insults.
Sheila had lurched back into Mickey’s orbit. Reaching out, he yanked her to him and cupped her short-skirted buttock in his hand. She twitched away from him, looking annoyed, but he pulled her back, this time throwing an arm round her so that his hand rested on her breast.
“Bugger off, Mick.” Sheila jabbed him with her elbow, hard enough to make him drop his arm and swear, and Denis wondered if she was really as drunk as she seemed. “I can do better than you in my sleep. Keep your hands off or it’ll be your goolies next.”
Dylan West laughed, smirking at Mickey’s discomfort. Jim Evans looked uneasy. And on Mickey’s face was a flash of the rage Denis had seen at Carnival.
“Leave her alone, Mickey,” he managed to croak.
“What are you going to do about it, Mr. Goody-Goody?” Mickey gave a high-pitched giggle and Denis realized he was drunk as well.
Someone had lit the cheap electric fire and the room was stifling. Denis’s nausea grew so intense that he could feel himself beginning to drool. Then, his bowels cramped, almost doubling him over.
Jesus, he thought. What was this? Some kind of monster bug? He had to get out before he was sick all over himself. Humiliating himself in front of Mickey was more than he could bear, and he wasn’t going into that hellhole of a toilet where everyone in the room could hear him puke. He turned and clattered back down the stairs, out where he could take gulps of fresh air.
He managed to walk, then, back towards the lights of the main road. He must have looked a fright because passersby detoured around him, but he didn’t care. The first pub he came to on Earl’s Court Road looked like salvation, and he made it all the way to the gents’ without disgracing himself.
A half hour later, he emerged from the toilet, feeling weak and empty, but a little steadier and more clearheaded.
He had to go back. He had to confront Mickey, or he would never live it down. Not with the others, and not with himself. He’d washed his face and washed out his mouth, slicking his hair back with his wet hands. When he stepped out into the chill night, he began to shiver. By the time he’d walked back to the flat, he was shaking all over. But there was nothing for it but to go on.
He let himself in the downstairs door and began to climb. There was no sound from above, and the stairs seemed to be moving beneath his feet. He wondered if he was delirious. Blinking back the sweat that had begun trickling from his brow, he reached the landing and walked in the door to the flat.
Sheila was lying on the floor. Why, he wondered, dazed, was she lying on the floor? Lynn was crouched beside her, smoothing down her friend’s tiny skirt.
Then, Lynn looked up at him, and he saw that she was sobbing.
And then he realized that Sheila was dead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Taking Jean Armitage’s chair, Gemma explained to Asia that she thought she had been attacked.
Asia looked almost as stunned as she had from the blow to her head. “No,” she protested. “How could—why would anyone want to hurt me?”
“Did you see or hear anyone before your fall?” Gemma asked.
“No. I was in here. But, I remember now, I was worrying about the alcohol, wondering if I could possibly have made a mistake. I had two full bottles of grain alcohol, for the next batch of limoncello, and one is missing. I suppose I shouldn’t have kept it in the greenhouse, but I never thought . . .”
“Was it visible from outside the greenhouse?” Gemma asked.
“No, there’s a closed cupboard under the potting bench. The alcohol and lemon zest have to infuse in a cool, dark place for about six weeks before you add the sugar and water. There’s not much room in the kitchen cupboards, so I just keep it all out there together.” Asia was beginning to sound exhausted, although she’d put down the cloth and her head no longer seemed to be bleeding.
Kerry had gone up to the door with Mrs. Armitage, and Gemma could hear sirens in the distance. Her time to get answers was running out.
“Asia, when you rang me, you said you were worried about ‘the boy.’ What did you mean?”
Asia looked reluctant. “I don’t think I should have mentioned it. It wasn’t fair of me . . .”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that. I’ll sort it out, I promise. Did you mean Jess Cusick?”
Asia nodded. “I saw him in the garden this morning. When he should have been at school. And, then, when I saw the bottle was missing . . .”
“But why would you think Jess would do something like that?”
“Because he knew where it was, and what it was. He was here when his mother helped me mix the finished batch for the garden party. And, because, well, you know what kids are like . . .” Asia sighed. “Or at least that’s the sort of trouble we got into when I was at school. I was worried about him, you know, after what happened to poor Reagan.” Her eyes filled with tears.
Gemma patted her hand. The sirens had stopped and she could hear voices from upstairs. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, although she felt a jolt of worry. “Asia, did you tell anyone else about the missing alcohol? Or about seeing Jess?”
“Well, I told his mother, of course.”
Like Ryan Marsh’s, Michael Stanton’s flat was on the ground floor of an ordinary estate. Kincaid thought that for someone maintaining a false identity, the ability to come and go without alerting all the neighbors would have been important. It was the neighbors, however, that had led Sidana’s team to the flat. Although the flat number on Stanton’s driving license had not corresponded with an existing address, Sidana had organized a house to house, starting at one end of the estate and systematically working across it. Eventually, a resident had identified Stanton’s photo as, “That unfriendly bloke two doors down.”